The Gate of Filigree Shadows

 A Dream Retelling by Cynthia Morshedi

I waited
in the hush of a world
where no sun ruled the sky—
only the glint of metal cages
in a darkness that shimmered like velvet.

They were not crude prisons, these cages.
They were crafted—
tall, filigreed towers of wrought design,
each a quiet monument
to someone long forgotten.
A house of containment. A reliquary.

And I stood there, the only one awake.
Waiting for the dead
to remember their names.

The first to stir
was Felicia.

A stick woman,
woven from wood so fine
she seemed carved by breath and longing.
Not human, but beautiful still—
a sculpture of memory rising to stand.
The filigree gleamed as I unlatched her cage.
It clicked open like a cathedral gate.

“Welcome, Felicia,” I said,
and watched her step out,
upright and graceful in her reduction.

But something inside me whispered:
Why this form?
Why give up even a sliver of self
to come back like this—
senseless, bodiless, still bound by design?

Could she feel the rain?
Could she taste the wind in leaves?
Did she choose this form,
or was it assigned—agreed upon
in some forgotten contract?

I made a note in my soul.
Do not sign that one.

The others stirred in their towers,
wooden limbs creaking like branches in a dream.
One by one, I would greet them—
but in my heart I mourned.
Not for the dead,
but for the cost of return.

Because I, too,
had longed to escape the ache of flesh.
But now—
now I remembered.

It is the flesh
that feels the breeze
and smells the honeysuckle
and weeps when it must.

The stick-forms could see the world, perhaps.
But I… I wanted to linger in it.
To touch it. To be it.
Even in pain.

Even in shadow.

And so I stood,
a guardian between gates,
between return and remembrance—
and wondered if all resurrection
is truly resurrection
at all.